Electrum on Puppy Linux - Offline Bitcoin Wallet on USB stick

[brightday]

Here is the video how to do it and the copied short description:
https://youtu.be/RBlpWhLVbZo

It took me 3 days to find solution that works. If you like it, send any amount of bitcoin to:

1GHaTVyJo8wG4VqdTevyZa7xSyicMGLikj

Steps:

1.    Puppy Linux ISO has only 220 MB. Download ubuntu-compatible ISO from http://puppylinux.com

2.    Rufus - download portable version from https://rufus.akeo.ie

3.    Create bootable USB using Rufus, selecting ISO of Puppy Linux

4.    Boot from USB to Puppy Linux

5.    Create Save File - if not, all system changes and user file changes will be forgotten on reboot

6.    Puppy Package Manager - Update database

7.    Install packages:

    python-qt4
    python-pip
    python-sip

8.    Install electrum using pip2 command

9.    Protect yourself: turn on firewall

10.  Make USB offline: disable all network adapters

11.  Start Electrum and create your first offline wallet

I hope this will help you not to spend days discovering what works, as it took me. Happy bitcoining!

[TryNinja]

You could also just use BitKey. I am using it with two flash drives for my cold-storage wallet (one for the bootable system image, and the other for the encrypted wallet files);
I like it because it's a Debian based image that already comes with Electrum and a lot of Bitcoin related open source softwares. It's just plug and play and much more practical than your method.

[1] https://bitkey.io/

[brightday]

Good idea. I was also thinking beside tutorial to create finished ISO file with electrum, maybe will do that in the future. But for now, this one is twice smaller than bitkey, and you can trust it more because you yourself download original linux and electrum, no messing of third party which assembles it, so we might say it is a trade of higher trust for little bit more work. With tutorial, one should be able to create a bootable usb with electrum in about 15 minutes, really not long.

[seekoin]

Hello,

I am using the same way for my cold storage wallet; meanwhile I am currently running Lubuntu which is fine as well and the good new is that it works fine on my Raspberry PI, coz they have a full customized distro for this kind of PC.
I would advise to use SSD instead of USB: they run much more faster. The main disadvantage I found out with SSD is that one: you could easily loose them so watch out 

[brightday]

Good to know. The advantage of Puppy Linux is that it is super-small, 220MB, and therefore it is fast. Even on slow USB you get a very good speed of boot and usage. And you need to boot it only when you spend BTC, which is rare, you don't need to have it plugged-in to receive the BTC to those addresses. Therefore I do not see a need for SSD, it would collect the dust most of the time, but folks who like it, why not.

[pooya87]

2.    Rufus - download portable version from https://rufus.akeo.ie

i prefer UUI (Universal USB Installer). it works for all the linux distributions out there and it is much faster. i have never encountered any issues with it either.
i find Rufus a bit complicated too.

this is a good website for these kind of stuff too: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/